


Three Who Bear Witness

by bluebeholder



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bastardizing The Bible, Experimental Style, Gen, It is the Winchester Gospel, Right?, here i go again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:03:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5343398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost...</p>
    </blockquote>





	Three Who Bear Witness

**Author's Note:**

> In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost...

**I. father**

they were never supposed to be like this.

they were never supposed to have this vast and terrible knowledge. dean’s hands were supposed to hold toys, not tools. sam’s first schoolbook wasn’t supposed to be a latin textbook. dean should have stained his clothes with fingerpaint, not gunpowder. sam wasn’t supposed to make his hands bloody from killing monsters. 

but mary—pure mary—mary with her summergreen eyes and heart as deep as the roots of a mountain—mary is dead and without her john doesn’t know what to do. he is a father, he was a husband, he was a marine, but first he was a mechanic. so he does what a mechanic does. he takes apart the world and rebuilds it with new understanding and when it’s broken he has to fix it.

so he takes those perfect boys and maybe he was never a father at all because he reshapes them in this new earth and he does not make sons, he makes soldiers. he loves them. he loves them so much he thinks his skin will explode from the pain of it. but he can’t be a husband anymore and maybe he was never a father at all so he makes them soldiers.

dean and sam are fires in the dark but john has studied will-o’-wisps and does not follow them because he knows this world he made and there is no light in it. to follow their light would lead him to his death. he is using them as instruments of his own revenge and he knows it and he hates himself for it. but dean is strong and sam is strong and he loves them, even in the dark.

he does not think of “sacrifice” because if he thinks it he will give up. there are monsters out there and his soldier-sons will make the world better. dean’s summergreen eyes never dim and sam’s heart is as deep as the roots of a mountain. they were made in john’s image but sometimes he thinks that something else had a hold on them too.

**II. son**

it was never supposed to be like this.

it is not that sam hates his father. he hates loneliness and plaid flannel shirts and endless, endless roads. he hates pushpin maps and sawed-off shotguns and being afraid to love. but he does not hate his father.

because hating his father means hating wondrous rediscovered lore and classic rock and a beer with family. it means hating the thrill of the chase and pillow fights in a motel room and the idea of home that only means a car. these things sam loves.

and besides dean is content with these things and sam loves him too. maybe dean is like their father, but he is living proof that “hunter” doesn’t mean “soldier”. he loves the world and sam tries to be like him, and if their father raised dean then he’s not just a man at war after all. so sam cannot hate his father.

when sam was younger he wore thin t-shirts and loose hoodies and sneakers instead of flannels and leather jackets and boots. he still eats salads rather than burgers when he can. these things drove sam and john apart. but sam never wanted that. he admires his father. john is strong and courageous and smart and sam’s oldest superhero. he could never hate his father.

but sam does not want to be his father. so sam uses the internet and goes to college and loves with an open heart and never stops looking for home. he is his father’s son but he is not his father.

if, when he prays sometimes in the desperate black of night, god himself looks like john, and sam demands to know why his father deserted him, and he is only answered with love—if these things are true, well, sam is the only one who ever has to know.

**III. holy ghost**

he was never supposed to be like this. 

he was never supposed to watch sam and dad tear the family apart as if they couldn’t see that sam was just like dad. he was never supposed to stand by and let his brother leave and let his father disappear. he was never supposed to do those things.

but he did. he did these things. he haunts the corners of their life to remind his brother and his father of their family, of their purpose. he is the specter of mary’s sacred memory, the one who keeps sam fighting and drives john to drink. he is the spirit of the soldier his father expects his sons to be, the one who keeps john running and drives sam away. dean knows this.

sometimes dean wishes he could be a poltergeist. he could throw things and break things and scream as loud as he wanted. but dean is the healer. he cleans up after fights and sutures up wounds in body and soul and soothes hurt feelings when everything is quiet again. he can’t throw or break or scream because that would only make everything worse.

he wants to be like his father. he lurks in his father’s shadow. sometimes the emf screams too loudly when he carries it. but he learns to fight and to be a hunter.

he wants to be like his brother. he lurks in his brother’s shadow. sometimes salt burns his fingertips. but he learns to love and be an ordinary man.

dean is the heart and the skin of this family and he knows this, too. dean moves them, keeps them alive, binds them together. the horrors of night will not touch his brother and the terrors of memory will not touch his father, not while dean holds the fire by the door. the trouble is that sam and john do not know this.

when sam tells dean his dreams in the dark it is hard not to believe that he can have the apple-pie life. when john recounts stories of monsters in the dark it is hard not to believe that he is really a soldier. he is somewhere between reality and fantasy, life and death. dean’s world is built on fake ids and wild lies and long-lost memories. he is too savage to be ordinary and too kind to be a soldier and he knows this, too. and he thinks his father and brother know it.

but when he is on the road with his family, telling jokes and stories and playing silly games, the sun giving them its benediction, dean is happy to be only a phantom.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Amen.


End file.
